Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Hard Evidence vs Paranoia: An Unhappy Review of Amoris Laetitia

Thursday has done me the great honor of caring
enough to comment on my recent Amoris Laetitia (AL) one-sentence post – the issue being the juggernaut topic:
Communion-for-divorced-and-civilly-remarried (CDCRM) and the now infamous
footnote 351 (FN351). And so I will repay the favor with a longer reply.

Thursday makes serious charges that merit a
sober response and not only for the topic at hand, but also because they extend
beyond the present specific topic and suggest a general posture towards an
entire category of people and themes. According to Thursday, there is nothing whatsoever of real concern in AL in
general, or specifically with FN351; andif
anyone does have concerns, there is something wrong with him and how he is
reading the document. Thursday cites:

-Paranoia

-Taking
it totally out of context

-Assuming
the Pope is lying elsewhere in the document

Before
addressing each of these three charges (although in a different order), it is
worthwhile to review the footnote itself.

351 In certain cases, this can include
the help of the sacraments. Hence, “I want to remind priests that the
confessional must not be a torture chamber, but rather an encounter with the
Lord’s mercy” (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium [24 November 2013], 44:
AAS 105 [2013], 1038). I would also point out that the Eucharist “is not a
prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak”

Taking it totally out
of context

This is a
surprising charge because the opposite is true. Only by taking FN351 totally
out of context is it possible to read it in harmony with prior Magisterial
teaching. The problems with FN351 arise precisely when it is read in context. We will examine three specific matters of context.

1. Context
within AL itself

FN351
refers back in the main text to an “objective situation of sin - which may not
be subjectively culpable.” And it is clear from the preceding passages that
this is about divorced-remarried and unmarried-cohabiters.

So now in
context, the point of FN351 is that help from the Church for divorced-remarried and unmarried-cohabiters “can include the
help of the sacraments.” And within FN351 itself, the connector “hence” clearly
specifies which sacraments: confession and the Eucharist.

Taken out
of context, there is no difficulty with FN351 stating that the “Eucharist is
not a prize for the perfect.” However, in the context of help from the Church for divorced-remarried and unmarried-cohabiters
including the sacraments of confession and the Eucharist, this phrase in FN351
takes on a different meaning: that the Eucharist is not a prize for the perfect
sacramental marriage and can include
the divorced-remarried and unmarried-cohabiters.

It was an
important issue and everyone was waiting for an answer. Will there be CDCRM? Despite
all the anticipation from this wider context, AL does not provide a definitive
Yes or No.

And
furthermore, we must consider AL’s silence on CDCRM in the context of another
hot-button topic, same-sex unions, for which AL was willing to provide a definitive
No (paragraph 251).

3. AL quotes
St. John Paul II out of context

AL itself in
paragraph 298 quotes John Paul II’s Familiaris
Consortio No. 84 out of context. The full passage is below. AL quotes the
black text in isolation omitting the red text. This is
an egregious misrepresentation of the original meaning.

Reconciliation
in the sacrament of Penance which would open the way to the Eucharist, can only
be granted to those who, repenting of having broken the sign of the Covenant
and of fidelity to Christ, are sincerely ready to undertake a way of life that
is no longer in contradiction to the indissolubility of marriage. This means,
in practice, that when, for serious reasons, such as for
example the children's upbringing, a man and a woman cannot satisfy the
obligation to separate,
they "take on themselves the duty to live in
complete continence, that is, by abstinence from the acts proper to married
couples."

In FN329
for this quotation, AL alludes to the omitted phrase about living in complete
continence. However in doing so, it references Gaudium et Spes, again out of context, applying to
divorced-remarried and unmarried-cohabiters what Gaudium et Spes says specifically about sacramentally married
couples.

Assume the Pope is
lying elsewhere in the document

If in fact
AL is a Trojan horse for one footnote, it does not necessarily follow that the
Pope is lying elsewhere in the document; actually quite the opposite. If he
believes CDCRM is valid, the reasonable approach would be to situate it unobtrusively
among all the established and unquestioned truths. He would not have to
disagree with those truths (making him a liar). He would only disagree that
CDCRM should continue to be excluded from the total landscape.

Referring to
the out of context quotation and reference cited above, someone could claim
that I am calling the Pope a liar there. I am not. I am merely drawing
attention to public forensic evidence readily available to anyone who cares to
look. I have no access to the inner knowledge and motives of the Holy Father.

Paranoia

This is
the most serious of Thursday’s charges
because with one word it attempts to undercut any and all questioning of AL and
seemingly any papal document. It really is a form of ad hominem rather than answering the arguments directly; but in
fairness, I admit my pithy one-sentence post did not provide arguments that
could be answered. Nevertheless, this charge must be addressed.

So citing paranoia,
Thursday appears to be referring to
the psychological state of the traditionalist/sedevacantist type who generally
operates on the presupposition that everything beginning with Vatican II is a
conspiracy (Masonic, Modernist or otherwise) to substantially change and/or destroy
the Church. Such a person reads every papal document after Pius XII with great
suspicion looking for the error he “knows” must be there. Such people do exist
and their illness prevents them from benefiting from all the overwhelming good
that surrounds the minute, supposed errors they have found in (or have read
into) the document. This suspicious posture exists outside of traditionalism,
but is most easily identified in that crowd.

But a substantiated
concern over the explicit vagueness in AL regarding CDCRM is not a sufficient cause for a pathological
traditionalist diagnosis. No doubt the traditionalist will cite the same
concerns, but that does not mean anyone with such concerns is a pathological traditionalist.
As detailed above, there is concrete evidence of (a) an opening for a break
from Church practice on a non-trivial matter; (b) an evasive approach with no
definitive Yes/No answer; and (c) quoting out of context. Bishop Athanasius Schneider, supporting his criticism of AL with writings of St John Paul II and Vatican II documents (something pathological traditionalists would not do), has provided this excellent commentary on CDCRM in AL.

Summary ReplyWhy not a
definitive No to CDCRM? The only answer that explains why Francis would not simply restate the consistent Church teaching is that it is not what he wanted. Then why not a definitive Yes to CDCRM? Too controversial and risk of schism.So in the end, no definitive answer. Qui tacet consentire videtur(He who is silent is taken to consent).

Beginning
with Cardinal Kasper’s key note February, 2014, through two tumultuous synods,
and culminating with the explicit vagueness in AL on this question along with dubious
quotations and references, it is reasonable to conclude that a policy of CDCRM was a primary objective
of the whole ordeal. And it would rely on an artificial divorce of practice
from doctrine, and be positioned among many pages restating the traditional Catholic teachings on
marriage and family.

Absent a
definitive answer, it is no surprise we already are seeing conflicting
interpretations of AL on this point.